From ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY and the “biology, chemistry and physics aren’t climate” department comes this oh-so-whiny study that complains there’s not enough brainwashing materials in hard science textbooks. The reason there’s so little is that climate isn’t relevant to these subjects at the introductory level. Sheesh. What a waste of grant money.
Study finds very few pages devoted to climate change in introductory science textbooks
Less than 2 percent of pages discussed climate change in leading biology, chemistry and physics textbooks
As an ASU graduate student, Rachel Yoho wanted to push the boundaries of renewable energy research. What she didn’t fully anticipate is that it would also lead her to questioning how climate change is taught in today’s universities.
In the Biodesign Center for Environmental Biotechnology, led by director and ASU Regents’ Professor (and recent Stockholm Water Prize winner) Bruce Rittmann, she found a welcome home to make her research thrive.
There, she focused on microbes that were giving the renewable energy field a literal jolt. For her dissertation work, led under the guidance of mentor César Torres, she published several groundbreaking papers on advances in microbial fuel cells, which turn waste into electricity through a bacterial biofilm that has the ability to grow and thrive on an electrode.
“They breathe the metal, and give us electrons for energy in the process,” said Yoho.
But while pursuing her Ph.D., she also became interested in the art of teaching science and earned a certificate in scientific teaching in higher education.
Among the most polarizing issues encountered in science and society today is the topic of global climate change. Despite nearly universal scientific consensus that it is indeed real and caused by us, the American public and politicians continue to be skeptical of the science.
She was inspired by her science education courses to ask research questions that reflected the interdisciplinary nature of her lab-based research in the Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology at ASU’s Biodesign Institute. So, when she started examining the topic of climate change in introductory science courses by pouring over introductory science textbooks, Yoho was surprised by the paucity of materials devoted toward subjects like global warming, climate change and renewable energy applications.
“In a cutting-edge research lab, we are used to looking at things across disciplines,” said Yoho, who now performs research and teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “Within the educational environment, I wanted to see how different disciplines approach topics, and so, we looked at the terminology and content of textbooks, which are likely the most well-established and well-respected first or second stops for information in undergraduate education.”
The introductory textbooks were also chosen because they “represent the intersection of teaching to non-scientists (popularization of science) and training for future scientists.”
Now, in new research published in the journal Environmental Communication, Yoho and co-author Rittmann examined more than the 15,000 combined pages from current editions of 16 of the leading physics, biology and chemistry undergraduate textbooks published between 2013 and 2015.
They found that less than 4 percent of pages were devoted toward discussing climate change, global warming, related environmental issues or renewable energy applications.
In addition, the research team found:
- While they observed a large variation for individual books, biology textbooks had on average the largest number of pages discussing the effects of climate change, but still less than 2 percent, while chemistry textbooks showed the largest variation, and physics books have an average of less than 0.5 percent of total pages;
- The greatest content is in the final third of the book for biology and chemistry, which supports a general trend in education in that “applications” usually are addressed towards the end of a course of study, building on a firm foundation of content knowledge;
- Among the three disciplines, the least emphasis was placed on renewable energy technologies in the biology textbooks examined. Characteristically, alternative fuels and other technologies related to the transportation sector are emphasized heavily in chemistry and physics;
- Nuclear energy, which was addressed separately, is found on less than 1 percent of textbook pages and unfavorably represented.
“The terms we included were not just limited to a keyword search, but also involved going page by page through each of the textbooks. We looked for related topics like any applications and discoveries related to fossil fuels, and renewable energy technologies like wind and solar,” said Yoho.
They noted that climate change, global warming, fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear energy are not often a focus of the textbooks or course for these disciplines. Furthermore, these topics may not even be the focus of a single unit in one of these courses and are unlikely to be a primary factor in the selection of the course textbook.
However, these cross-cutting topics of socio-scientific debate represent important societal and environmental contexts for developing informed and productive citizens.
“The discussion within these traditional, compartmentalized science disciplines has implications on introductory-level science education, the public perception of science, and an informed citizenship,” said Rittmann.
Going forward, they think perhaps it’s time for introductory sciences to be more explicit about some of these pressing topics that span multiple disciplines.
“It’s a difficult balance in an introductory course,” said Yoho. “There’s so much information to cover in a short time. However, our students are facing these issues inside and outside of the classrooms. Our communities feel the impacts of our energy decisions and climate.” Some discussion can go a long way towards preparing students. “A next step might be to focus on the terms and content we discuss, as well as the potential role of these topics in introductory education,” she added.
“However, no single discipline can tackle this alone,” wrote Yoho in the paper. “While the traditional disciplinary lines influence specific discussions, the overall trends reveal a relatively small percentage of pages allotted to the topics related to energy technologies, climate change, and related environmental issues across the disciplines.”
By documenting that large textbooks devote relatively few pages to these pressing societal issues, this research calls into question the effectiveness of the information provided to students in introductory materials.
###
This manuscript was published in Environmental Communication on April 29, and is available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17524032.2018.1454337
I don’t recall any books on these subjects devoting more than 2% to Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny either.
Are you kidding! Those are the cornerstones of white privilege graduate programs. Those texts would be two feet thick, but they don’t print them because of … well … that would manifest white privilege … and deforestation … plus they can’t read …
Ah! Now you’ve hit on the neuron mass problem… It would appear that human neuron masses are not so different from Skinner’s pigeon neuron masses.
The Church of Global Warming needs to indoctrinate young minds to succeed, just like all other religions and other virulent viruses… because young neuron masses are good at pattern matching and associating meaning to a pattern.
Darwinian evolution has birthed Christians, Cargo Cults, and Global Warming fanatics… all nonsensical and illogical religions.
The question remains, “Will humans ultimately realize that supernatural forces do not exist, and that humans are an insignificant component of the universe and, in fact, an insignificant component of the tiny mote of dust we inhabit… or will we continue to view the Earth as the center of the universe and continue to see our image impressed into and onto every part of existence whether or not such claim is valid or provable?”
The answer is, of course, 42
Cool. I arrived at the 5th Catalan number too.
I really don’t know what all the fuss is all about. According to the news today over 80 percent of US High School kids can’t read at the level required to understand the content of such science books anyway.
80% don’t even know what 80% means.
“Less than 2 percent of pages discussed climate change in leading biology, chemistry and physics textbooks”
Shameful! Far too much space is given to minor matters like cell structure, the periodic table, or the four fundamental forces. Leave that stuff out and get down to the important business.
Sounds like 2% is 100% too much.
Let’s see how that works baking a cake.
Take 3 cups flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, baking power and a few eggs and milk.
Then add in a tablespoon of fresh dog poop from the backyard. Mix and bake.
So it’s just 2% crap.
Wonder how it tastes?
And yet we allow the Left to feed this 2% crap cake to our kids in school.
Little “climate change in leading biology, chemistry and physics textbooks”. That’s because biology, chemistry and physics are sciences, whereas climate change is a religion or belief, with no true science involved.
Microbial fuel cells emit CO2, so what is a true believer in catastrophic man made climate change doing working on them?
I should also complain why the analytical solution to the Navier-Stokes equations is not found in climatology textbooks. I mean how can they predict climate change? The equations remain unsolvable. They use numerical solutions in supercomputers. Just a fancy word for trial and error where the error is growing over time because the system is chaotic.
The Navier-Stokes equations are also one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s millennium problems:
Jim
If you really want to get into that discussion the proposed driver of climate change is a quantum process and it already tells you classical physics Navier-Stokes won’t fully hold, you end up in a debate about whether it is a good approximation and having to classify the media.
That problem actually dates back to 1920 and Erwin Madelung
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madelung_equations
Hard sciences are well aware how to approach the problem as a quantum pressure tensor but there is a divide between them and climate science.
I bet Witten et al can write a string theory version of Madelung equations in 10 dimensions. Just don’t ask them to solve it. Neither Madelung nor Schrodinger nor Witten can solve even the classical Navier-Stokes equations. Perelman has been trying to solve it for 10 years but it’s harder than Poincare conjecture.
When I was in college, the population bomb was all the rage. My chemistry professor, who wrote the book we used, may have a little in his book (mayby half a page with a graph in a 600 page book) about the population explosion but in discussion on this timely topic in class, he was all in favor of his students having 3 or 4 kids because they were more likely to have smart kids who might change the world. In the 45 years or so since that class, we’ve gone from worrying about mass starvation to the growing problem of obesity while burning a substantial portion of the food we grow as transportation fuel.
I am also wondering why the emphasis on bio, chem and physics only. What about engineering and economics? The people who might actually create the solution to the alleged climate change issue will be engineers working within economic constraints. Could it be many of those engineers might be able to do the math and realize how absurd the simple academic solutions really are?
*sigh* This is why I had to stop listening to the “Science radio” channel on Tune In- absolutely everything had to have “climate change” inserted.
What next? Three-star reviews of cookbooks? “This is a wonderful book, but there wasn’t enough
cowbellclimate change!”In spite of this paper, I do wish I had Rachel Yoho and a bottle of rum.
Somebody HAD to say it.
“Near universal consensus” is in itself a methodological travesty if any open minds are left to look into it.
Where did the funds come from that paid for this study?
Ugh. As an ASU graduate and someone from Ohio who also did undergrad work at a MAC school…I am sincerely sorry.
“Less than 2 percent of pages discussed climate change in leading biology, chemistry and physics textbooks”
No Sh*t Sherlock. Is that because they are biology, chemistry and physics textbooks? Subjects that might cover climate are anthropology, archaeology, geology, geography, paleontology and history, perhaps. In fairness to the complainant, biology might cover climate within zoology and botany. However, I would guess that a course in politics is where you would find the most pages on climate change.
Uh, catastrophic future climate change is predicated on computer models, Stephen. The hypothetical effects of a possibly warming world on the biosphere should acknowledge the uncertainties of such climate models by scientists making such extrapolations. To the extent they don’t, they are propaganda.
I want to know how much time they spent on climate basics in grade school.Since her expectations are for them to spend more time on climate change, I suspect her grade school science class spent time exclusively on climate change and none on climate basics.
I’m not sure the subject even belongs in freshman biology. I have a newer book around but the only handy one is from 1989, 8 pounds on the bathroom scale. The problem is that these have long been useful for prepping for a Ph.D. qualifying exam, having too much for freshman. This has resulted in non-major courses, some that too often teach agendas instead of science.
A quick perusal found 1412 pages, nothing really new in ecology, a little on meteorology and oceanography, plus appendices, glossary, and index. It might pay to put students into physics, chemistry and geology first. Or maybe historical approach. Lack of applications in current books is a good sign as these belong in advanced classes, weight not so much.
“Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology at ASU’s Biodesign Institute.” What is that?
For the record I found a more recent (2002) biology text, no reduction in weight. The book is “BIOLOGY” by Eldra P. Solomon, Linda R. Berg and Diana W. Martin. Brooks/Cole (1254 pp. plus appendices and glossary). There are two and a half pages of reviewers. Most of it stays with usual exhaustive coverage, but there is a 19 page last chapter 55 (Humans in the Environment) with the following sections.
SPECIES ARE DISAPPEARING AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE
DEFORESTATION IS OCCURRING AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE
CERTAIN ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTANTS MAY AFFECT EARTH’S CLIMATE
STRATOSPHERIC OZONE CONTINUES TO DECLINE
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ARE INTERRELATED
These have subsections with emphasis on negative human effects, such as commercial activities.
They do acknowledge successes with endangered species and a few uncertainties. Fig. 55.10 is a graph showing increase in global temperature from mid 70s (~14.0 to ~14.4) to 2000, flat back to 1960. Fig. 55-2 is a poor (not college quality) sketch of “Enhanced Greenhouse Effect. ” LEARNING OBJECTIVES have at least six of ten that I would rate negative, the remainder mostly neutral. There is a reasonable one page section on Career Visions, Environmental Consultant.
Brief study indicates that this chapter is mostly biased and even worse, poor and incomplete science, much referenced to 2001 IPPC report. —- “The human influence on climate change can be identified despite questions about how much of the recent warming stems from natural variations…..;…. extreme weather events… have occurred with increasing frequency in certain regions…..; Almost all climate experts agree with the IPCC’s assessment that the warming trend has already befun and will continue throughout the 21st century. ” And the best for last—“Scientists around the world have been researching global warming (bold) for the past 50 years. As the evidence has accumulated, those most qualified to address the issue have reached a strong consensus that the 21st century will experience significant climate change and that human activities will be responsible for much of this change.”
Comparison with 2010+ texts would be interesting and more importantly how departments and instructors followed the texts. Also there were earlier texts covering similar applications, but I suspect with better science. This one appears better than environmental texts of the period, last chapter excepted. Proper analysis would require weeks of study.
(“We analyzed over 15,000 pages of introductory-level undergraduate Biology, Chemistry, and Physics textbooks to assess terminology and content related to these pressing environmental topics.”) That would be ten biology textbooks, maybe a few more if old ones included.
“CERTAIN ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTANTS MAY AFFECT EARTH’S CLIMATE”
But CO2 is not a pollutant. Unless one is a CAGW activist/bureaucrat/politician.